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Improve discoverability of Bank/Program Select lane in MIDI editor

Open jtackaberry opened this issue 4 years ago • 2 comments

When the user opens the MIDI editor or changes tracks, Reaticulate should

  • check to see if the Bank/Program Select lane is visible
  • if it isn't, add a notice at the top of the Reaticulate GUI asking if
    • Add lane to track
    • Ignore for this track
    • No and don't ask again

jtackaberry avatar Nov 01 '20 16:11 jtackaberry

Nice idea Tack. Possible additions to this: -Each bank specifies the CCs it uses in the bank definition (for true continuous control, not for articulation changes). These lanes are also made visible -Any lanes not in this list are removed.

This way there's no searching around for the different lanes you need to use, whenever you change track.

I can see the need for this to be a global "always synchonise CC lanes in editor" command in the general settings somewhere, as opposed to a "per track" setting.

DoubleGrit avatar Mar 08 '21 11:03 DoubleGrit

@DoubleGrit this is related to #41 as well, which introduces the idea of banks defining what CCs they use. #41 mentions providing the ability to toggle automation lanes, but I also had CC lanes in the MIDI editor in mind as well.

For this to be really useful, Reaticulate will need to remember any subsequent user customizations to the lane heights. If it restored everything to some bank default each time the track was selected that would get frustrating.

I also have doubts about an "always synchronize" option. Many libraries use lots of CCs that are seldom actually touched. Since the bank definition shouldn't be opinionated about this (and so it would list all CCs used by the library, even the commonly ignored ones), if those lanes got restored every time that would be a frustrating user experience, because users will regularly have different notions about what CC lanes they want visible vs hidden.

So I think instead the better UX is:

  1. If a bank defines CCs, provide some mechanism in the UI for a one-time sync of MIDI editor lanes to library CCs (plus a corresponding REAPER action of course).
  2. Provide a global option to remember CC lane configuration per track and restore it when the track is selected. (This would pair nicely with Reaticulate's existing "Track selection follows MIDI editor target item")

Reaper kinda already remembers CC lane settings per MIDI item, but when you use a single MIDI editor per project (as I do) the Reaper native capability really just falls apart.

jtackaberry avatar May 22 '21 14:05 jtackaberry